Alameda Unified’s suspension and expulsion rates declined last year, newly released state data show, though rates for African American and Latino students remained disproportionately high. District leaders attributed the drop to more supportive disciplinary interventions.

Google may be expanding its private transit service for employees from the streets of San Francisco to the waters of San Francisco Bay. The Silicon Valley search giant conducted a trial run of a private ferry service from Alameda’s Harbor Bay ferry terminal to Redwood City and back.

City leaders want to start socking away some extra cash to pay down Alameda’s growing retiree medical debt. The City Council on Tuesday signed off on a plan to set up a trust fund to pay future retirees’ medical bills.

Third grade students at Franklin Elementary School got a special visit from a member of the San Francisco 49ers football team on Friday. Backup quarterback McLeod Bethel-Thompson stopped by to talk to the students about his efforts to raise money to rebuild a school in El Salvador and to offer free sports clinics to youths there.

City leaders signed off on a pile of planning documents Tuesday night that will ease the way for development at Alameda Point. Neither SunCal nor Alameda Point Community Partners, the first group hired to oversee development at the Point, were able to complete all of those steps. Our tweet by tweet from Tuesday’s City Council meeting is here.

Representatives from the city, the East Bay Regional Park District and developer Tim Lewis Communities have agreed to attend mediation in an attempt to end their legal fight over a 3.899-acre property the park district had hoped to obtain to expand Crab Cove. The park district sued the city in 2012 after the City Council rezoned the surplused federal property on McKay Avenue, dubbed Neptune Pointe, to allow homes.